Leon’s departure from Sentinel lands came quickly.  It was all too obvious that Keeper wanted him gone, and he was only too willing to oblige.  Besides, while he wasn’t walking away from the palace with anything physical, he was at least satisfied with what he’d learned there, especially about what happened in the wake of Jason Keraunos’ death.  He’d known for many years now that the Brilliant Eleven managing to inflict a defeat on his Clan’s old vassals was largely because most of those vassals had abandoned Aeterna to return to Thunderbird-controlled regions of the Void, but he supposed he hadn’t ever really understood just how many of the vassals had left, or how many had been left behind.

Many such thoughts ran through his mind as he sat in a private room on Silver Spear, watching with his magic senses as the distance between himself and Memoria grew more and more.

‘Keeper had better come to his damn senses soon,’ he thought rather uncharitably.  ‘I’m no threat to him, whatever he may think.  The sooner I can get what those golems are preparing, the sooner I can leave this plane and get out of his nonexistent hair.’

He sighed, the issue of how to handle Keeper fading in his mind in favor of the remaining problems that weighed on his attention—namely, where in the hells Anshu was, as the Indradian hadn’t kept in regular contact with the Thunder Kingdom, and when he might want to get in contact with Ambrose again.  He still had the Grave Warden’s silver twig ready to go, just waiting for him, but he supposed any time within the next few years would be complicated given the problem of Arkhnavi that had to be dealt with.

That, and Leon wanted to achieve Apotheosis before launching any more great efforts.

‘And that would be much easier if Keeper would let me take what I need to brew ambrosia,’ Leon bitterly reflected.

With another, deeper sigh, he banished that complaint.  He trusted Helen and Tikos to come through for him on this front, as they’d often done before.  Eternity awaited him, and he was barely forty years old.  There wasn’t much of a need to rush.

After an impatient groan, Leon sprawled out over the soft floor of the small meditation chamber and stared at the ceiling of the dark room, then closed his eyes and cast himself deep within himself.

A moment later, he opened his eyes in his soul realm, and there found the Thunderbird idly preening her feathers upon her perch while thin currents of the Mists of Chaos flowed into Xaphan, slowly restoring to the demon the power he’d once wielded.

“You’ll have to do that, too,” the Thunderbird quietly said to him, drawing his attention back to her.

“Huh?” he asked out of surprise and momentary confusion.

“Using the Mists of Chaos,” the Thunderbird replied as she cast a meaningful look at Xaphan.  “To achieve Apotheosis, you must condense an Origin Spark.  You remember the theory you must follow, don’t you?”

“I have to condense as much magic as possible, then use the Mists of Chaos to ignite it into the Origin Spark.”

“Very good,” the Thunderbird praised.  Though her avian face was incapable of smiling, Leon could almost see a smile anyway given how she angled her head and warmly regarded him.  He had to admit, it was nice, basking in the glow of her praise.  “Condense all the magic in your soul realm, not just ‘as much as possible’.  Then add some Mists of Chaos.”

“Sounds easy,” Leon sarcastically proclaimed.

“It’s anything but,” the Thunderbird stated.

Leon nodded as he sat down on the steps in front of his throne.  “Let’s say I manage this,” he said.  “What comes next?”

The Thunderbird chuckled, then with a single flap of her wings, launched herself from her perch and down to stand in front of Leon, shifting into her human form at the same time.  “Already planning ahead, are you?” she said with amusement.  Teasingly, she continued, “Is not achieving Apotheosis enough for you to focus on now?”

Leon shrugged and gave her a roguish smile.

“Fine, fine,” she stated as she took a seat next to him.  “Your body has to adapt to using origin power in much the same way that it must adapt to using magic.  Adapting to using magic power is the first four tiers of magic, though, and it doesn’t take that long for a body to adapt to using origin power.”

“Really?” Leon skeptically asked.

The Thunderbird smiled at him for a second before admitting, “All right, that was a lie.  Most who achieve Apotheosis never go beyond that achievement, following the exact same pattern as all magical tiers before it.  So I’ll say this: you can classify the power beyond achieving Apotheosis into five ‘tiers,’ if you feel like being reductive.

“The first is the most obvious: simply existing as a mage who’s achieved Apotheosis.  Given how transitioning through the magical tiers works, many call this the eleventh-tier.  The ‘twelfth’, so to speak, is when your body fully adapts to origin power, refining it into a truly immortal form.  By then, so long as any part of your body remains attached to your soul realm, it will regenerate.”

“That sounds… hard to imagine,” Leon said.

“Origin power makes unimaginable things possible,” the Thunderbird said.

Leon nodded.  “What’s next?”

“The ‘thirteenth-tier’, if we must call it such, involves creation.  Specifically, it involves using origin power to create something from nothing.  Until this point, origin power is, for the most part, extra-potent magic power.  Once you grow strong enough to turn it into something else, to create using nothing more than that origin power, then you can consider yourself to be in the thirteenth-tier.”

“You sound reluctant to call these tiers, ‘tiers’,”  Leon observed.  “Out of curiosity, does that change anything about how their auras are sensed?  Because as it is now, the differences between the magical tiers can be sensed if you’re strong enough.”

“Such changes can be sensed easily enough, yes,” the Thunderbird stated, albeit reluctantly.  “This lends strength to those who wish to treat their post-Apotheosis life the same as their pre-Apotheosis life, but I prefer to consider it in a more esoteric way.”

“How so?”

“In my day, those who’d freshly achieved Apotheosis were called ‘Immortal Souls’, and those whose bodies had adapted to origin power were ‘Immortal Bodies’.  Those who could use creation power were ‘Creators’.”

“That’s… I prefer tiers,” Leon stated.

“Why?” the Thunderbird squawked.

“Easier,” Leon simply stated.  “How’s anyone to know if an ‘Immortal Body’ is stronger than an ‘Immortal Soul’ without prior knowledge?  What if they forget?  What if they’re knocked on the head really hard and have to learn all this over again?  But everyone knows that twelve is more than eleven, not much need for clarity there.”

The Thunderbird scoffed.  “An almost disgustingly utilitarian approach.  Where’s your sense of wonder and grandeur, Leon?  Can you even call yourself the leader of a Clan as mighty as ours with such an attitude?”

“Yes,” Leon replied.  “It’s easy.  Watch this: I’m the leader of our mighty Clan.  Look at that, didn’t even choke or anything.”

“Your glibness does you no credit.”

Leon shrugged.  “What need does one have for credit if they can pay in cash?”

With a huff, the Thunderbird wondered, “Where did I go wrong with you?  Have I coddled you too much?  How can you have no taste for the poetry of life?  How can you be satisfied with such mediocrity?”

“They’re just names for tiers, plain and simple,” Leon argued.  “No need to overthink things.”

“Fine, fine,” the Thunderbird said again.

“So, what’s the fourteenth and fifteenth-tier?” Leon asked.

The Thunderbird glared at him without much heat in her yellow eyes, and then her hard-as-iron expression softened.  “The Lifegiving stage, or the ‘fourteenth-tier’, if I must call it that, can create life using origin power.  Aside from the Divine Beasts and Primal beings, I’ve never known anyone powerful enough to create living, thinking beings, though.”

Leon cocked an eyebrow.  “Do wisps not count?  I thought they were supposed to be autonomous, though living, beings.”

“Autonomous, not free-willed, and certainly not living in the sense that you are alive,” the Thunderbird stated.  “Nestor is right to be skeptical of the stone giants’ supposed self-awareness as wisps are not sapient.  They can be created by even the weakest post-Apotheosis mage since at that point it’s more a matter of technique than power.  But true life—in the sense of plants and the simplest animals, at least—can be created at the Lifegiving stage.”

“But humans are out?”

“Most definitely.  Well, creating other humans by using origin power, at least.  But the Primal Gods created angels and the Primal Devils created demons.  The Divine Beasts created beasts derivative of themselves, such as the Great Dragons creating lesser dragons.”

Leon nodded in understanding.  “Did you ever create any beasts?”

“Many are the beasts I created, Leon.  None outlived me.”  From the tone of her voice, Leon knew that asking any more would not only be fruitless, it would also be rude, so he dropped the matter.

“What about the fifteenth?  The last ‘tier’?”

The Thunderbird frowned, deep furrows forming her light olive-skinned face.  Her yellow eyes narrowed in thought, and she held that for long enough that Leon wondered if she was going to answer at all or if she were too preoccupied thinking of the old beasts she’d created and lost.  But answer she eventually did.

“The Distinguished stage is possessed of such an understanding of the universe around them that they’re basically invincible to all those beneath them in power.  The name stems from their near-perfect ability to perceive the universe around them.”

“Omniscience?” Leon whispered in wonder.

The Thunderbird immediately clarified, “No.  It’s not that they can perceive the universe in its totality, but more that they have gained a new way to sense the universe that gives them an unparalleled understanding of how it works.  It’s not unlike how a mage’s magic senses alter their perceptions of the world around them, only at the Distinguished stage, it’s the laws of the universe, not the world around them, that they perceive.”

“That sounds… mind-bending.”

“It is.  This was the limit of my strength at the time of my death.”

Leon cocked an eyebrow.  “When you were killed by Khosrow?”

“Yes,” she darkly confirmed.  “As for Khosrow…  Leon, these five stages—or ‘tiers’, if you must use that term—are how the mages in the Nexus define their power structure.  But Khosrow did what no one thought possible and drew his soul realm out into the real world.”

“You’ve told me that before, as I recall,” Leon said.  “I… don’t know how that happened, but why is that such a big deal?  Why would a mage want to do that at all?”

“It allowed him greater access to the Mists of Chaos and their powers of creation, as well as increased his power over the universe around him.  And since his soul realm had been drawn out into the physical world, it became a physical place, and much harder to destroy.  Think about how easy it is to destroy the soul realm of one of your enemies—a stab to the chest and some lightning.  For Khosrow’s soul realm to be destroyed, it required much more significant force by angels, demons, and survivors of many Beast Clans to destroy.”

Leon nodded, filing all of that information away.  It was important, he was sure, he just didn’t know how or why, yet.

“I believe,” the Thunderbird said, “that drawing your soul realm out into the physical world will be a kind of ‘sixteenth-tier’, though, in the entire history of the universe, I have only known Khosrow to accomplish it.”

“I’d say it was a shame you killed him,” Leon stated, “but he asked for it by attacking you, I say.  Still… to pick his brain about magic would be quite the experience, I’m sure.”

“At the Distinguished stage, the understanding of the universe grows to the point that ancient runes can be discovered.  It is from these highest, most powerful mages that new ancient runes are discovered.  Before them, only the Primal Beings had such knowledge of the runes.  Even I had a hard time figuring out the runes, though if you ever reach those heights, I would bet that you’d have an easier time distinguishing them from the chaos of the universe around you.  So, if a mage at the level of an Elemental King can discover new runes, then I can hardly fathom what knowledge Khosrow must have gained due to the power he wielded.”

Leon almost began to salivate at the thought of such runic discoveries.  “How many fifteenth-tier mages would you say there are in existence?”

The Thunderbird snorted.  “Already sizing up the competition?  Good boy.  Less than a thousand at any given time.  Sometimes more, more often than not fewer.  Right now… hmmm… twenty-thousand years or so until the next Reconstitution of the Nexus… I’d estimate a little more than average.  Maybe five hundred in the universe.”

“That’s a lot of mages who could be discovering ancient runes,” Leon stated in awe.

The Thunderbird seemed to decide that crushing his dreams was her new favorite sport as she immediately said, “Most mages at that level don’t care enough about enchantments to bother discovering new runes.  Their mastery over the universe around them is already total enough that the effort required to distinguish new runes is hardly worth the effort.”

“Lazy fucks,” Leon bemoaned.

“Such is how they view life and power,” she replied.  She then glanced at him out of the corner of her eyes and said, “Practice creating wisps, Leon.  Concentrate your training there for the foreseeable future.  We’ll have you begin training to condense an origin spark in a few years, once you’ve had some time to settle into your tenth-tier power.  We wouldn’t want to rush things.”

Leon frowned somewhat childishly.  “Just kick me in the teeth, why don’t you?”

“Take it from someone who’s done all this before, kid.  Doing this right is better than doing it quickly.”

“You’re right.  And when you’re right, you’re right.”

“And I’m always right.”

Leon chuckled.  “If you say so.”

“I do, and so it is, was, and always shall be.”  The Thunderbird closed her eyes and nodded with nothing less than deadly seriousness.

Leon just smiled and leaned back on the steps.  Neither of them spoke for a while, and he let the silence drag on before approaching the next thing he’d been wanting to ask her about.

“How did you like going through the palace?”

The Thunderbird remained quiet, though her silence didn’t stretch too long this time.  “It was a ruin, not too different from any other.”

“Didn’t feel a thing about it?” Leon asked.

The Thunderbird sighed once more.  “I’ve had a long time to come to terms with the fall of my Clan, little Leon.  If this were Minos, things might be different.  It wasn’t; it was merely the base of operations that Jason Keraunos established while he occupied this plane.  Its ruin means as much to me as the ruins of your House’s Argent Palace: more than seeing any other ruin, but it doesn’t weigh upon my mind particularly heavily.”

With some trepidation, Leon asked, “Why would Minos be different?”

“Nestor has told you of it before, hasn’t he?”

“It was the spiritual capital of the Clan.  It was our shining jewel, a palace-plane of such beauty and wealth that all other planes were shamed in comparison.”

“It is also the plane of my birth,” the Thunderbird revealed.  She shot Leon a proud, though understated smile.  “It’s not for nothing that Minos became the center of our Empire, the focus of our finest architectural minds.  Golden Minos was always my home, even throughout my residence in the Nexus.”

The Thunderbird leaned back just as Leon was, then spread her arms to the heavens and reminisced.

“I hatched in a nest no different from any others, in a deep forest where no human roamed.  I was the fourth of seven nestmates.  Only three of us survived long enough to learn to fly, and only I lived long enough to achieve sapience.  I flew through that forest, breathed the cool air that blew in from a nearby mountain range, and hunted in the creeks and branches.  It was the simplest time of my life, and often do I think of it and wish I were back there, the wind in my feathers, a blue moon crab’s blood wet on my tongue, the mist that often enshrouded the forest cleansing my body…  I gained much by choosing to live as a human, by choosing to participate in the complex society that your people have made… but I lost much, too.”

“I agree with you on that,” Leon whispered.  “It sounds like a wonderful childhood.”

“I lived there for more than just my childhood, boy; I was the Queen of that forest for more than two hundred years!”

Leon shrugged.  “What’s that to you nowadays?  A couple centuries pass by in a breath or two, doesn’t it?”

She pinched his arm.  “I’m not so muddled that I lose track of centuries!”

Leon playfully frowned, then gave her a soft, somewhat pleading look.  “Is that forest still around?  Or was it, last time you checked?”

“I decreed that it would forever remain wild, free of the destructive hands of sapient beings.  It was for the wild, for only me and my Clan to set foot upon.”  Her eyes sharpened and she sternly said to Leon, “Set foot upon, Leon.  Not disturb.”

“You don’t have to tell me that,” Leon replied.  “I get it.  I get it.”

The Thunderbird crossed her arms and proudly nodded.  “Good.”  She glanced at him from the corner of her eyes again, this time with an impish grin.  “You’re supposed to be training, aren’t you, young man?  Let me see some practice for creating wisps.  I don’t want you returning to the physical world until you can conjure up some good-looking eagles!”

Leon grinned, then sprang to his feet to begin training in earnest.  He had a lot of work to do, and now that most of his immediate obligations had been met, he had a lot of time to see to that work.  And the sooner he got to work, the sooner he’d be able to start properly working on achieving Apotheosis and reaching the Nexus.

Training, ruling his Kingdom, working on making children with his ladies…  That sounded to him like a good use of a few decades.  Now if only Anshu could get word to him so that he could stop worrying, then he’d truly be ready to settle down for a while…

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